


Mothered

by JRaylin441



Series: Briareus [20]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Ed is a complete and utter mess, F/M, Gen, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Starts out kinda sad, surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 16:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7275805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRaylin441/pseuds/JRaylin441
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at the development of Riza Hawkeye's dreams over the years.</p>
<p><i>Her dreams of romance lived in the abstract of the </i>future<i>. Because Roy was it for her, she knew. And she would tell him once he was in a position where he could make his own rules and decisions. Realistically speaking, however, their goal was going to take years to achieve. Probably decades. It was only sensible, then, that Riza took any thought she may have had of chubby cheeks and tiny hands and discarded it.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Mothered

When you sign your life away to the army, it generally comes along with a _carpe diem_ mentality. Because, when it comes down to it, any day could be your last. Life, romance, pleasure, everything was rushed in an attempt to _livelivelive_ before the potential bullet that would end it all. In Ishval, especially on the frontlines, the lifestyle had been easy to spot. Every man and woman present was convinced that they were going to die any second, and any break was filled with a desperate grasp at pleasure (for those who were new) or a blank stare at a wall (for those who had, in a way, already died).

That was, Riza reflected, the first thing that had set them apart. They had gone through the phases, first drowning themselves in any desperate, heady pleasure they could find, and then sitting alone, off in some corner while they waited for the next call to fight. But, after enough time had passed and they still hadn’t died, something had changed. She, Roy, and Maes had all found something to look toward, beyond the desperation of the battlefield. It was not a glowing path, filled with glorious ideals and fulfilled dreams. Rather, they chose the most difficult path they could find, shouldering the suffering they deserved for the pain they had caused. Roy made a decision, and they made a pact, and together they would force The Hero of Ishval through the ranks until there were no more ranks to go through. There, from the top, it would be possible to block the entire country from potential suffering.

It was not a happy thought, but it was a thought that went beyond the battlefield, and that was more than anyone else could lay claim to.

It felt like they were living on an alternate plane. The struggles that had once encompassed their entire lives were now something to observe from the outside. They sat huddled in corners, writing coded letters or having whispered discussions as those around them sloughed through coping mechanisms that they had outgrown. Riza did not look down on the others. Rather, she took their suffering on as a personal failure. Roy had decided that it was their job to fix the world, and any deviation from that was now on the ragtag trio. It was liberating and incarcerating and it isolated her from any other potential friends she might have made while on the frontlines.

That was just the beginning of the sacrifices.

Riza had never really planned for children or marriage, but it had always been a sort of hazy fact. The sort of thing she had assumed would always happen. Liking children well enough, and having had a crush or two while growing up, it had just been the sort of dream she didn’t know she had until it was no longer possible.

She wasn’t sure when exactly she started to fall in love with Roy. There were never any shocking epiphanies or days of struggling to understand what caused the fluttering in her stomach every time he smiled. It was more that the love grew over time, twining it’s tendrils into every untouched corner of her mind until it was one of the immutable facts of the universe. The sun rose every morning. A ball thrown in the air will return to the ground. Riza Hawkeye loves Roy Mustang.

It didn’t change anything about their dynamic. He was still an idiot. And if she ever took a bit too long to wake him up when he fell asleep on his paperwork or lived every day with the knowledge that she would trade her life for his in a split-second well, she didn’t let it bleed over into her work life. He was a major, and then a lieutenant colonel, and then a colonel while she was his subordinate. There was no point in pursuing a relationship when it could compromise his chances of becoming Fuhrer. Their lives were not their own: that was something they had agreed on while on the barren plains of Ishval.

Still, she couldn’t help but get a thrill every time she was asked to go retrieve the Colonel and was able to show up to one of his dates only to whisk him away. If she cast a vicious smile over her shoulder then, well, who could really blame her? And if the woman refused to return any of Roy’s calls after that, well, she wasn’t really good enough for him anyway.

Her dreams of romance lived in the abstract of the _future_. Because Roy was it for her, she knew. And she would tell him once he was in a position where he could make his own rules and decisions. Realistically speaking, however, their goal was going to take years to achieve. Probably decades. It was only sensible, then, that Riza took any thought she may have had of chubby cheeks and tiny hands and discarded it. Children were hardly safe in her current world, and would probably be even less safe if they were those of the Fuhrer.

So, there would be no children. It was neither the first nor the last thing she would give up.

* * *

He came stumbling into the office with his right calf swathed in a strip of grimy white cloth turned dark brown in the center. His towering brother was trailing just behind him, flapping his arms about and demanding that Ed _please sit down so he could look at it_. The short blond seemed to be temporarily deaf as he threw open the door to the inner office and thumped his bloodstained report onto Roy’s desk.

“Brother, please. You did everything you need to do. Please just sit down and let me help you!” The voice was growing slightly hysterical, but Riza was already learning after a month of working with him that Ed was twelve years of reckless abandon that wouldn’t stop for anything. Even a potentially infected injury. He wasn’t listening to his brother, who was often the only one that could get Ed to do anything, and that meant that the situation called for a completely new approach.

This may require a woman’s touch.

Riza tried to reach inside to the maternal instincts that were definitely supposed to be there. She let her normally removed expression soften into a concerned smile as she stood from her desk. From the corner of her eye, she watched Havoc as his face slackened in shock and his elbow unerringly found Breda’s side to call attention to the situation. She ignored it.

“Edward, honey.” The endearment felt unusual on her tongue, and she was unaware that her voice was capable of sounding that _soft_ , but for some reason it felt right. It felt like the proper way to approach a twelve-year-old kid who wasn’t old enough to deal with his own injuries despite the fact that he desperately wanted to be. “Why don’t you sit on that couch and we can take a look at your leg, hmm?”

The boy was frozen. Major Edward Elric had taken one step to the side, as if to place himself between Riza and Alphonse, and hadn’t moved a muscle since. His mouth was slightly open and he was breathing fast. As she watched, his eyes darted from her to the couch to the door on the other side of the room. Behind him, Al was hunched and motionless.

This was not the response that she had been going for, but maybe it was what was supposed to happen? She took another step forward. “Ed?” A comforting gesture. A hand against his cheek.

There was a brush of physical contact before all the breath huffed out of Ed at a speed that made him choke. Flesh and metal limbs flailed as he threw himself backward. One shoulder hit Al just as his injured leg faltered beneath him and somehow Ed was crouched on the ground with his injured limb twisted up under him and the rest of his body tensed like a skittish wild animal.

“Fullmetal.” Roy was behind Riza and it was a testament for how shaken she was that she hadn’t noticed his approach. At his commanding officer’s voice, Ed seemed to coil even tighter. For a moment, he moved as if he were going to try and dart for the door.

“ _Fullmetal_.” Roy’s voice gained intensity without gaining volume, and it blanketed the room in its power, reminding them all that he was, in fact, the one in charge for a reason. Ed stopped panting for breath and relaxed from his tensed position. “You are injured. Sit on the couch and allow your brother to see to your injuries.” Moving like an automaton, the Fullmetal Alchemist did exactly that. Once he was seated, Roy nodded to himself and did an about-face, returning to the interior office. Riza, taking his lead, returned to her desk.

“Ow. Shit.” Alphonse was cleaning the gash beneath the cloth with rubbing alcohol and Ed slowly cursed himself back to normal. Breathing a sigh of relief at the fact that she hadn’t done irreparable damage, Riza turned and caught Roy’s eye. She had expected him to be smug, but he looked equally shaken.

_What was that?_ He mouthed the words and Riza allowed her shoulders to rise and fall in a shrug.

But she thought of a shell of a boy hunched in a wheelchair while his brother loomed above. She thought of a basement floor stained in rust-brown blood and dregs of matted hair. She thought of a metallic voice chanting _sorry…sorry…sorry_ while Roy dragged Ed up by his collar.

And she thought she knew.

* * *

Riza was in a bit of a hurry. Roy had a veritable mountain of things to do that actually had to be finished by the end of the day and he was running on about three hours of sleep. She herself had a veritable mountain of things to do, but most of them required that she leave the office to complete them. Even with Havoc and Breda ordered to be as loud as they wanted to be today, it was only a matter of time before Roy blocked out the yodeling and gambling and passed out.

“Don’t you think his hair is getting a bit shaggy? Oh, dear, you really ought to get it cut.” Riza rounded the corner in front of the desk at the main entrance to find the two secretaries practically cooing over Ed. One of them was ruffling his fringe in a way that had resulted in Havoc laid out flat on the floor on more than one occasion. Now, however, Ed looked much more likely to spontaneously combust than flip anyone over his shoulder.

“You do need a bit of a trim. And maybe a bit of a meal while you’re at it. You’re practically skin and bones, child. Oh! I know just the thing. I can make this lovely-”

“Hello Major Elric.” Riza brought a firm hand thumping onto Ed’s shoulder in a way that could never be construed as light or kind and was really only just this side of a blow. Ed’s tense body tried to jump in shock but the heavy hand kept it pinned until the panic started to drain away.

“Hey Hawkeye.” He turned to look at her and she immediately saw what the women meant. His fringe was long enough that it brushed against his cheekbones when he moved his head. Cheekbones there were entirely too pronounced for a twelve-year-old.

This was the problem with Ed. He walked around looking like no one was taking care of him. He had eyes that always looked a little bit like they were hiding a forest fire and the taut shoulders of someone who thought they had to do it all on their own. Combine that with his stature and it was really no wonder that every woman with a lick of maternal instinct was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Even now, Riza tried desperately to convince herself that it was not a good idea to run her fingers through Ed’s fringe, just as the secretary had a moment ago.

“Would you please accompany me back to the office, major? I believe Colonel Mustang had a question or two that he needed you to answer.”

Ed rolled his eyes like this was the last thing he wanted, but he gave in just a little too quickly and walked down the hall at a pace that stretched Riza’s legs. They made it to Roy’s office ahead of schedule to find an enthusiastic game of poker going on, with the rules modified so that some form of yelling was involved with every bet. Miraculously, Roy himself was still awake, and seemed to be slogging his way through some report or another.

Ed could always sense a chance to bother the man, so he headed into the inner office and flopped into a chair. His feet were soon propped up on the desk, sprinkling half-dried mud across the wood. “You needed to ask me something?” Roy’s eyebrow twitched and his subordinate smirked in victory.

“I was simply wondering if you would like to borrow a book or two to sit on. It can’t be comfortable to strain yourself, trying to reach the desk like that.”

By the time the screaming stopped and Ed stomped out of the office, Roy had forgotten to ask any questions, which was just as well because he hadn’t had any to ask in the first place.

“That everything, Lieutenant?” The words were laced with residual irritation.

“Not quite, Ed. Please come sit down for a moment. We must discuss the matter of your hair.” Ed took a deep breath as if preparing his lungs for the volume of the fight he was about to put up, and Riza continued before he had the chance. “If you insist on disregarding any kind of regulation, you at least have to keep yourself safe. We need to get that fringe out of your eyes.” It was all said in the most business-like manner she could manage. Riza had considered lying, and saying that it was regulation that hair simply be kept out of the eyes, but it was entirely possible that Ed had read the regulation book at some point just so he could make sure to disobey it, and if he’d read it once then it was memorized.

Grumbling, Ed actually listened, and five minutes later he stood up with a fringe significantly shortened.

“That will be all. You’re free to go, though I might recommend stopping by the mess hall. I hear they made baked spaghetti tonight.” Baked spaghetti was one of the only dishes the mess could successfully make, and of the few this one was Ed’s favorite. There were legends of the time he had asked for an entire pan of the stuff and the cooks, fed up, had given it to him. Supposedly, the Fullmetal Alchemist had gained ten pounds that night.

A razor’s edge of a grin split Ed’s face.

“See ya ‘round, Lieutenant. I’ll be at the mess if you need me.” And he swaggered from the room, not showing a trace of his earlier panic.

When she turned to grin victoriously at Roy, it was only to discover that the man was fast asleep on top of his work. Without a hint of hesitation, she snatched up a pen and walked to his side, jabbing the blunt end into his lower ribs, a place she had discovered to be ticklish when she was fifteen. Roy yelped and snapped upright, scowling mightily at his lieutenant. Riza just smiled lightly and tapped the edge of a form with her pen.

* * *

The months flew by after that, as things became more and more complicated. Not a word of what was discussed at work could be mentioned outside the office. Tensions ran high throughout all of Amestris. Just when it seemed like Roy might be getting somewhere, the transfer order came through and Riza was moved away from the man she had sworn her life to.

She allowed herself ten minutes of wallowing, alone in her apartment when she first arrived, and then she picked herself up, strapped on her guns, and carried on, waiting for any kind of sign or signal from Roy.

It was a lovely little reprieve when, just a few weeks into the transfer, Ed showed up at her door to return the firearm she had lent him. Honestly, she was surprised she had been able to make him hold on to it for that long. Still, she welcomed him into her fairly barren apartment and relished in the moments of interaction with a human that she could know had no true ulterior motive. It was much like a breath of fresh air.

At some point the conversation turned to love, and Riza may have been slightly too transparent about her own feelings, but it was almost worth it for the way she got to tease Ed about his own relationship with the charming Rockbell girl. By the end of his visit, she felt filled almost to bursting with calm affection for the young boy who was struggling to become a man while surrounded by the utter chaos of the world. She showed him to the door and allowed her hand to rest on his shoulder for just a moment, soft and comforting.

Ed did not flinch away. In fact, she could almost argue that he had leaned into the touch. It felt, for a moment, much like it did when she was able to take Roy away from whatever woman he was dating at the time, in that she had to repress the urge to travel back to Eastern Command just to toss a cocky smirk in the faces of the secretaries at the main desk.

“See ya ‘round, Hawkeye.” And Ed slipped out the door and out into the chaos. For a fleeting moment, Riza was overwhelmed by an impulse to snatch him back and protect him.

But she let him go. And she thought that maybe she had been wrong about which dreams she could and could not have.

And that was enough.


End file.
